In October 2023, I heard the CEO of the org I worked for say he wanted to better support retention. I was sitting in one of my best friend’s living rooms in Milan (because he’s fancy like that), and the idea popped into my head: What if we built a customer loyalty program?

I was already running parts of customer advocacy—writing case studies, launching surveys, coordinating gifting. A broader, more connected customer marketing strategy felt like the natural next move. Something that could support retention and feed acquisition.

The plan was solid, but when the time came to prove its value, I couldn’t.

There was heaps of value. but because I made the mistake of assuming someone else would track the impact. People didn’t want to attribute success of campaigns or deals to it and I only measured performance to improve campaigns, but I didn’t tie my work to the metrics leadership used to guide decisions. By the time I started doing that, the window might’ve already closed.

I don’t know what ultimately led to the role being sunset. But I do know this:

• The results I did track showed clear, measurable impact
• My work still lives across their customer comms and website
• And now, I don’t wait to align with business goals, I start there

When I hear a leader present a problem, I move to solve it. And now I also make sure the solution speaks their language.

This post is a guide to doing both. So here’s what I’ve learned, and what you can use to make the case for Customer Marketing in your org.

Let’s go.
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I imagine you’ve heard it before. “We already have customer success.” “That’s what community is for.” “Support handles that.” “Isn’t that Product Marketing?”

You can fill in the blank with just about any adjacent role, CX, lifecycle, UX research, growth etc.
It’s not always said with malice. Sometimes it’s just a lack of understanding.

But every time I hear it, I think: You’re asking the wrong question.

Because customer marketing doesn’t create redundancies. It creates connection.

It’s the connective tissue that bridges the work of brand, growth, product, CS, community, and sales.
It drives:

• Revenue
• Retention
• Relationships
• Reputation

If your leadership team doesn’t see it yet, here’s what I learned to help them understand.

Step 1: Define What Customer Marketing Actually Is

Customer Marketing is a strategic, cross-functional discipline within marketing that focuses on deepening relationships with existing customers to drive long-term revenue growth, brand advocacy, product adoption, and market influence. It sits after the sale but before the renewal, and extends far beyond either.

Customer Marketing isn’t a single role, channel, or campaign. It’s a system.
A connective layer that links Product, Customer Success, Sales, Community, Brand, and Growth Marketing, and turns your customer experience into a competitive advantage.

It supports and strengthens the entire post-sale journey by:

• Activating new users through onboarding, education, and enablement
• Retaining customers with timely engagement, personalized content, and continuous value communication
• Amplifying voices via reviews, case studies, testimonials, references, CABs, and events
• Driving expansion by aligning messaging with usage, milestones, and new needs
• Capturing insights that inform Product, Sales, and brand direction

So what does that look like in action?

Here are just a few of the programs Customer Marketing leads or supports:

• Review Campaigns → boost G2 rankings, improve perception, create social proof
• Customer Newsletters → keep customers aware of launches, events, use cases
• Product Update Comms → reduce support tickets and drive feature adoption
• Onboarding Content → improve time-to-value, reduce churn risk
• Case Studies → empower sales and elevate customer voices
• Reference Programs → shorten sales cycles by making advocacy scalable
• Customer Education → videos, templates, guides, and repurposing documentation

If you’re not running these programs? Guess who is? No one. Or worse, your competitors are stepping in that gap. That translates to missed opportunities, avoidable churn, and customer silence that could have been a story.

Step 2: Speak Their Language (Revenue, Risk, ROI)

Leadership teams live by a few key numbers. They have North Star metrics that tell them whether the business is growing, thriving, or at risk. Whether it’s ARR, NRR, CAC, or LTV, everything they greenlight, every budget, every headcount, every campaign, has to tie back to those metrics.

So even if customer marketing feels like a smart investment (and it is), you still have to draw a clear, unmissable line between your programs and their outcomes.

They need to see that Customer marketing isn’t waste, but rather retention insurance.

How customer marketing supports core SaaS metrics

Business Metric	What It Tells Leadership	How Customer Marketing Supports It	Initiatives / Programs to Implement
ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)	Overall company revenue performance from subscriptions	Drives retention, upsells, and brand trust	Case studies, review campaigns, customer webinars, product update emails
NRR (Net Revenue Retention)	How much revenue you’re retaining and growing from existing customers	Boosts expansion via education, community, and strategic comms	Onboarding, product adoption webinars, CABs, account-specific use cases
Churn Rate	Customer loss; how many customers leave over time	Reduces disengagement through proactive support and education	Milestone messaging, renewal gifting, onboarding guides, 30/60/90-day check-ins
LTV (Customer Lifetime Value)	Average revenue a customer will generate over their lifecycle	Extends lifecycle through ongoing engagement and deepened value	Loyalty programs, nurture journeys, user groups, reactivation campaigns
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)	How much it costs to acquire a new customer	Reduces reliance on paid channels through social proof and referrals	Review campaigns, referral programs, customer-led events, reference pools
Payback Period	How fast you recoup CAC from customer revenue	Shortens time-to-value via onboarding and enablement	Self-serve help centers, video walkthroughs, quick-start email series
NPS (Net Promoter Score)	Loyalty and likelihood to refer; a key brand perception indicator	Increases satisfaction, promotes positive sentiment	Surveys, review asks, gifting, surprise-and-delight advocacy moments
CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)	Sentiment at key touchpoints (support, onboarding, etc.)	Enhances clarity, ease, and customer confidence	Product tours, onboarding feedback loops, support follow-up campaigns
Customer Health Score	Blended signal of sentiment, usage, and risk	Builds consistency in education and engagement across accounts	Monthly newsletters, support resources, feature highlight campaigns
Product Adoption Rate	Usage of key features and functionalities	Promotes exploration and activation of underused features	How-to webinars, use-case blog series, in-app content coordination
Brand Sentiment / Trust	How customers feel about your company publicly and privately	Humanizes brand and reinforces trust through storytelling	Case studies, spotlight emails, customer podcasts or panels
G2 / Capterra / Trustpilot Rankings	Peer-reviewed perception in the category	Boosts credibility, visibility, and buyer confidence	Review campaigns, testimonial collection, marketplace strategy
Share of Voice (SOV)	Visibility in the market compared to competitors	Elevates content with real customer language and proof	Social sharing, influencer advocacy, customer takeovers
Customer-Led Content Volume	% of marketing content driven by real customers	Increases content authenticity, lowers content costs	Advocacy programs, co-marketing, customer-authored blogs

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When you tie Customer Marketing to metrics that matter, you stop talking about “nice to haves” and start speaking in executive priorities. You’re not pitching a creative idea. You’re showing how this function protects revenue, amplifies retention, and creates compounding impact across the funnel. But metrics alone don’t close the case. You also have to navigate perception, gently, clearly, and head-on.

Step 3: Anticipate Their Objections (Lovingly and Logically)

Even when the numbers add up, you’ll run into doubt. And not because leadership is hostile, it’s because they’ve heard overlapping claims before:

“CS owns the customer.”
“PMM handles messaging.”
“We’re building community.”
“We have tools for that.”

“Everyone is responsible for the customer”

What they’re really saying is:
“Prove that this isn’t just duplication. Show me what’s missing, and how Customer Marketing fills it.”

That’s your job in this step. Speak with empathy and precision to dismantle assumptions, but redirect them to what they already care about:

• Predictable Revenue
• Clear Attribution
• Scalable Systems
• Loyal Customers

Each objection below is followed by:

• Reframe — a shift in perspective
• Strategic Response — your confident, fact-based reply
• Tie-Back — how it connects to one of the four pillars listed above

“Product Marketing already handles it.”

Reframe: PMM speaks for the product. CM speaks with the customer.

Response: Product Marketing tells people what the product does. Customer Marketing shows them how it improves their life. PMM aligns with launches. CM aligns with real-world outcomes and adoption. They’re complementary, not interchangeable.

Ties to: Loyal customers, Predictable revenue

“CS or Lifecycle can just take this on.”

Reframe: They already have, and things are falling through the cracks.

Response: Lifecycle owns triggered flows. CS owns individual accounts. Who owns the full customer journey? CM builds repeatable, measurable programs for engagement, loyalty, and influence that cross functions.

Ties to: Scalable systems, Clear attribution

“That’s community’s job.”

Reframe: Community is a channel. CM is a strategy.

Response: Community teams manage dialogue. CM ensures those conversations turn into stories, insights, and action. Community creates engagement. CM translates that engagement into business impact.

Ties to: Predictable revenue, Scalable systems

“AI can do most of this now.”

Reframe: AI can scale output. CM creates relevance.

Response: AI can write. It cannot strategize, empathize, or connect. AI lacks judgement and doesn’t know when to ask a question, follow up, or adapt tone to a human moment. CM brings soul to the system and ensures what gets created actually lands.

Ties to: Loyal customers, Predictable revenue

“Let’s focus on net-new first.”

Reframe: Acquisition without retention is a leaky bucket.

Response: Every new customer you bring in will eventually leave without strong engagement, education, and expansion support. CM makes the sale stick, so net-new actually fuels growth.

Ties to: Predictable revenue, NRR, Loyal customers

“Where’s the attribution?”

Reframe: No attribution ≠ no impact. It means you need better tracking.

Response: CM can track engagement, expansion influence, referral pipeline, NPS shifts, and program ROI. It also collaborates with data or RevOps to tie advocacy to deal stages. Attribution isn’t a reason to delay, it’s a reason to formalize the function.

Ties to: Clear attribution, Predictable revenue

“We already have the tools, we dont need the person.”

Reframe: Tools are not strategies. And ownership matters.

Response: Just because the software exists doesn’t mean the strategy does. CM makes those tools valuable. Without ownership, review tools sit idle, journeys remain generic, and behavioral data doesn’t inform messaging. CM activates the tech.

Ties to: Scalable systems, Clear attribution

“But isn’t this just content?”

Reframe: CM uses content. It’s not limited to content.

Response: CM drives campaigns, messaging, relationship management, data feedback loops, and program architecture. Content is just one output. CM is the engine that turns engagement into results.

Ties to: Predictable revenue, Scalable systems

You’ve addressed the doubts. You’ve connected the dots. You’ve shown how Customer Marketing completes rather than competes with other functions. Now comes the part that makes everything real: proof. Because while leadership might love a good theory, what they really trust is evidence.

And here’s the good news:
You don’t need to wait for a headcount, a title, or a formal “go ahead” to start showing impact.
You can start where you are, with the work you’ve already done, the gaps you already see, and the outcomes your org should be tracking but probably isn’t.

Step 4: Bring Receipts

This isn’t about building something new. It’s about proving the value of what’s already happening, and showing what happens when you give it focus.

Identify gaps you’re already seeing

Look at your current customer journey. Where are things falling through?

• Low NPS or CSAT scores? That’s a trust gap. CM can help elevate promoters and address detractors through campaigns, surveys, and experience improvements.
• High drop-off after onboarding? That’s a content and engagement gap. CM can deliver use-case driven journeys, milestone comms, and education at scale.
• Underutilized features? That’s an adoption gap. CM helps surface those features in webinars, newsletters, and quick guides that speak the customer’s language.
• Customers not referring or advocating? That’s an opportunity gap. CM runs programs to activate, reward, and spotlight your happiest users.

Start building a simple audit in a Google Sheet or Notion table. Then simply map it to the painpoint – solution ( possible program) – and the metric it would impact.

Align Programs to Business Outcomes

This is where you make it crystal clear what Customer Marketing actually drives. Use hard numbers and narrative when possible.

Here are a few real-world style examples to spark your own:

• “We ran a review campaign that brought in 25 G2 reviews and increased our category ranking from #9 to #4. Our demo requests jumped by 12% that month.”
• “The onboarding nurture I wrote brought time-to-value down by 8 days, and cut early-stage churn in half for that cohort.”
• “The case study we published in Q2 was used in 14 opportunities and directly contributed to a six-figure deal.”
• “We sent a product update email that led to 200+ feature activations and a 20% drop in support tickets.”
• “Our customer spotlight series improved newsletter click-through by 28% and doubled responses from renewal-stage accounts.”

Hot tip: If you’re not tracking this yet, start retroactively. You likely already have stories and signals, you just need to connect them to impact.

Build your own attribution model (because no one else will)

Let’s be real: Sales won’t always tell you when your work helped close a deal. RevOps or data may not have the tagging set up yet, and leadership probably isn’t giving you a dashboard.

So build your own. Scrappy is fine, as long as it’s consistent.

Tactics to start with:

• Tag customer content in your CRM (HubSpot/ Salesforce) and watch for usage in late-stage deals
• Use UTM links for every customer-facing asset
• Track story usage in proposals, pitch decks, or sales emails
• Ask AEs directly (“Did you use that case study in your last call? Can I quote you?”)
• Track feature usage post-communication in Pendo or your product analytics platform
• Screenshot Slack wins, feedback, and AE mentions and keep a running “receipt bank”

Bonus tip: Set up a “Customer Wins” channel in Slack or Confluence to centralize internal praise and create visibility for your work.

Tie wins to people

There are two ways to do this. First is by pointing to joint wins. It shows how customer programs directly support acquisition, renewal/ retention, customer engagement. For example: “I wrote this case study with X customer on enterprise level topic, and Tony used it to close Y customer.” This isn’t stealing credit, but showing that the things you have created are impacting pipeline and closed/won deals. Why? If your top performers perform better with support from customer marketing initiative, leadership needs to know.

The other way to do it is if your org once had someone in customer marketing, lifecycle, or advocacy, even if part-time, point to what changed after they left. Use this to draw a clear contrast:

“When [name] ran advocacy, we averaged 25 reviews per quarter. Since then, we’ve averaged 10.”

“When lifecycle had bandwidth, onboarding CTR was 38%. It’s dropped to 19%.”

That’s not throwing shade. The aim is to show what happens when no one owns it.

You’re not waiting for permission. You’re creating a track record that leadership can’t ignore, and revenue can’t do without.

Step 5: Pilot a Program

You don’t need permission to prove value. You just need a clear problem, a small scope, and a smart solution.

Instead of fighting for a new budget line or waiting for someone to notice the gaps, pick one initiative. Then tie it to a business goal and prove the impact.

Here are four starter pilots to choose from:

Customer Newsletter Pilot

• Goal: Boost product education, reduce support load, drive adoption
• Audience: All customers, a segment (e.g., new users), or a specific plan tier
• Content: Support docs, product updates, usage tips, webinar invites, milestones
• How it helps: Drives NPS, CSAT, and product adoption, also builds a feedback loop
• Pro tip: Add CTAs like “What’s one thing you want to see next?” to surface customer intel

Milestone Messaging Series

• Goal: Improve onboarding, reduce early churn
• Touchpoints: 30, 60, 90-day emails or in-app messages
• Content: Celebrations (“You’ve created your first ad journey!”), product tips, next steps, asks for reviews or feedback
• How it helps: Improves time-to-value, keeps customers engaged, surfaces problems early

Mini Advocacy Hub

• Goal: Turn promoters into amplifiers
• Execution: Build a Notion page, doc, or lightweight site to manage asks like G2 reviews, case studies, referrals, testimonials ( UserEvidence is a great tool for this, and so is Slap-Five)
• How it helps: Centralizes requests and tracks influence on pipeline, brand sentiment, and retention

Churn Risk Campaign

• Goal: Re-engage at-risk customers based on usage data
• How: Identify a single churn signal (e.g., no login after onboarding), then run a 2-email check-in campaign or offer office hours
• Metric: Re-activation, logins, success calls booked, renewal intent

Pilot Tips

• Keep scope small and metric-focused
• Use “before and after” comparison
• Make a slide with impact, not just effort
• As tempting as it might be, DO NOT let Sales self serve. That is part of the value you bring.
• Share early wins in team Slack or your next sync with leadership
• Send regular updates to leadership. They will never respond, but keep it in their faces.

You don’t need to wait for a job title change or a new OKR.
You just need a campaign that works, and a way to talk about it.

Then? Bring the receipts. Again.

Customer Marketing Isn’t Redundant! It’s Revenue Insurance

SaaS companies and other orgs that function on subscription based models are earning their customers month to month and year to year. That means that it is critical that you maintain those relationships that you built to make the sale. Keeping customer engaged matters because engaged customers are more likely to advocate, and be loyal. Their advocacy will open the door to more new customers, turning your funnel into a flywheel.

So, to recap!

Step 1: Defined What Customer Marketing Is

A system, not a silo. The connective tissue that turns the customer journey into an engine of trust, loyalty, and growth.

Step 2: Spoke Their Language

You tied programs to real business metrics: ARR, NRR, LTV, CAC, NPS. You showed how CM doesn’t just help—it multiplies impact.

Step 3: Anticipated Their Objections

You didn’t dodge the hard questions. You reframed them. You showed that overlap isn’t redundancy—it’s opportunity for alignment.

Step 4: Brought Receipts

You ran audits. You tracked results. You created attribution even when systems didn’t exist. You proved value, even in silence.

Step 5: Piloted a Program

You stopped waiting for permission and started showing what was possible beyond just activities and campaigns. you are making impact.

Now, Your Marching Orders:

✔️ Choose one pilot to launch this quarter
✔️ Build a personal “impact dashboard” with early metrics
✔️ Create a 3-slide deck tying outcomes to business value
✔️ Share your findings with your boss, and your boss’s boss, and your boss’s boss’s boss.

Because SaaS isn’t a one-time sale. It’s monthly. Quarterly. Annually.

You’re reselling the value of your product every single day.

And if you’re not actively keeping customers engaged, supported, and celebrated?

You’re not nurturing. You’re reacting.

💡 Customer Marketing is the proactive strategy that keeps revenue sticky, customers loyal, and your brand worth talking about.

You’re restoring what’s missing on your team with this function: Connection. So go run your pilot. Prove your point.
And make your case to protect the revenue you already worked so hard to win.